provision of hand sanitising stations, cleaning of public surfaces

As I understand it, these two measures are more safety theater than anything else - it seems that almost all transmission is through the air, not through surfaces. But it would be good to hear about ventilation: getting lots of fresh air is one of the most effect ways of reducing transmission.

Finally, I realize this is probably futile given venue restrictions, but as far as I'm aware one dose of J&J is not more effective than one dose of Pfizer or Moderna. If you're going to accept a single shot of J&J, why not also a single shot of Pfizer? Conversely, some other vaccines (e.g. Sinopharm) seem much less effective - does it really make sense to give people full credit for those? Or is there an implicit restriction on which vaccines are accepted based on e.g. MHRA approval?

Hi James,

Thanks very much for sharing this feedback. 

We mentioned in the protocol that “We considered the venue rules, UK and London requirements, and World Health Organization’s guidelines when drafting this protocol. We also used these resources to draft questions for our COVID Advisory Board.”

Some of the complication comes from cases where the rules from these different bodies are different from what our COVID Advisory Board recommended. The various rules and recommendations shaped the policies,  but we didn’t explain our reasoning for some of the decisions and I think some of our language was confusing - sorry about that. 
 

I’ve responded to each of your main points below.

Are negative tests sufficient?

We have updated the protocol to clarify that attendees must be fully vaccinated. To enter the conference venue, they must provide proof of full vaccination. In some cases, the venue might consider the vaccine card inadequate (for example, if the card is from another country without a certified translation). In this case, attendees will also need proof of an officially-logged negative lateral flow test. 

Will contractors be vaccinated?

We’ve requested that all contractors and onsite employees are fully vaccinated. However, the venue expressed concern that they might be prohibited from agreeing due to UK employment discrimination laws, and we haven’t been able to secure agreement yet. We have escalated our request to the venue’s CEO and we’re waiting to hear back. If they don’t agree to fully vaccinated staff, they will require negative lateral flow tests as a minimum.

Can children attend?

We are continuing to monitor the situation and don’t plan to commit to a policy on children until closer to the event. Any parents who might wish to bring their children to EA Global can inform us when purchasing their ticket, and this information will help us to make a final decision.

Why are masks not compulsory?

We may revisit this policy but we’re not currently planning to require masks. We will encourage the wearing of masks and have them widely available onsite but we don’t plan to police their use (and thus don’t want attendees to attend with the expectation of strict mask protocols). The latest Government guidance asks the public to use their own judgement in deciding where they should wear one.  

Missing safety measures

The venue does provide surface cleaning and hand sanitizer stations, and we considered including that information in the protocol, but we worried that listing excessive detail would contribute to “safety theater” so we cut it from the final copy. We decided to focus on highlighting the policies that we think are most likely to contribute to safety, rather than giving attendees a false sense of security by highlighting precautionary measures that we think don’t add much. You can find more details on the venue safety protocols here. 

We failed to mention that the ventilation system at the venue brings in fresh air from outside (rather than recycled air) and has filters that are changed weekly. Windows will be opened to provide additional ventilation where possible (depending on the weather). In addition, the venue capacity is 1,200 in some configurations. We are only having 500 attendees, which is a 23% reduction compared to EA Global: London 2019. I’ve added this information to the protocol. 

Thanks for sharing your concerns. I’ll reply more later (baby is still sleeping on me!) but I wanted to quickly clarify that everyone must be fully vaccinated. The venue may not accept some vaccine cards so the testing backup option is for those limited cases. Sorry that wasn’t clear.

OP's claim of inadequacy of EA London COVID measures lacks an objective "effectiveness" measure. It criticises a lack of clarity of the EA measures  while lacking any clarity itself. 

I am stressing this as this same problem applies to public policy in many countries.  Australia is a severe case: its extremely harsh travel policy seems based on the premise that either the virus and its innumerable variant mutations will simply go away or that Australia can remain in perpetual lockdown without serious negative socioeconomic consequences on the medium and long term. 

For a proper decision (even just at EA Lonon) we would need a collective forecast of the objectively measured number of participants who will be infected/severe cases/die at EA London with the current policy and conditional on the one proposed by OP. Step 2 would be a vote in full knowledge of the forecast consensus and distribution. Prediki Prediction Markt offers free use of its platform for such "effectiveness" purposes. While this would be an effort, it might be well worth it, as a showcase to the world (and Australia) on how to decide such matters objectively and "effectively".

Someone in favor of the policy may respond to some of your concerns (e.g. the latter ones) with this sort of argument: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6uwLq8kofo4Tzxfe2/long-covid-is-not-necessarily-your-biggest-problem

Worth noting that this evening (6th September) there are reports that a COVID 'firebreak' could be imposed around the time of EA Global London, which could either force the event to be cancelled entirely, or lead to other restrictions being mandated (masks, social distancing, travel). Only tentative rumours so far, but it seems plausible.